Hunted
by A Scary Man
Summary: A deadly game of cat and mouse in a city about to be devastated by nuclear war...
1. Prologue

**HUNTED**  
  
Prologue:  
  
  
  
The fog hung low across the dark nightmarish landscape, reducing visibility to mere inches in front of their faces. In the distance they could hear sporadic sounds of gunfire, and a series of minor explosions. Overhead an aircraft roared past, its powerful jet engine momentarily blocking out any other sounds. Seconds later it had receded into the distance and there was nothing but the sound of their own footsteps. The three figures hurried on, knowing not which way they went. The fog covered everything in a thick grey shroud, and every way looked exactly the same as any other. All three were exhausted and gasping for breath, but they knew they could not stop. Their pursuers were not far behind.  
"Are we lost, Mother?" the girl asked anxiously.  
The woman looked around helplessly in every direction. There was nothing to indicate whether they were going north, south, east or west. They could even have been running around in circles for all she knew. Her teenage children were looking at her, fear in their eyes, desperately seeking reassurance that they were going the right way. Far in the distance came the sound of gunfire once more.  
"Let's go this way," she said, directing the two children on a course perpendicular to that they had just been taking.  
She knew there was little hope of reaching what they had set out to find. Their only hope lay in escaping pursuit and finding somewhere to hide until the fog lifted. Every direction looked as good, or more accurately as bad, as any other. She had decided simply to get as far away from the distant sounds of battle as possible. They ran on, and as they ran she strained hard to listen for any sounds that might indicate an approaching threat. There had been no evidence of their pursuit for several minutes now. Perhaps they had lost them. Perhaps they were safe here. Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps the guards were simply circling round to trap them. They couldn't stop running until she knew they were safe.  
Then she heard the sound she had been dreading most of all. It started as a dull thrumming vibration just on the edge of her hearing, then as it grew closer she could identify it as the sound of a Marauder trike's engine. The Marauder was the only vehicle that could operate out here in the hellish wasteland. She had taken the children here in the hope of escape, since the wilderness was virtually impassible.  
"Hide yourself!" she yelled to her daughter, as she grabbed her son and threw herself on top of him.  
The trike was on them now, its powerful searchlight piercing the thick veil of fog. The three of them lay on the ground as still as the dead, and the searchlight flashed over them. Her heart pounding, the woman waited to hear the yells of triumph from their pursuers. But the light moved on and they remained unseen. The trike turned and moved off in another direction. Only when they could hear its engine no more did the woman allow them to stand. She gave the children a moment or two to catch their breath, before they began running once more.   
"Are we lost?" the girl panted once more.  
The woman did not answer, for she had spotted something up ahead. Half-hidden by the fog, half-buried in the rocky mess before them, was some kind of structure. She did not allow herself to hope that it might be what they had originally been seeking. The odds against it had to be astronomical. And yet - and yet there _were_ no other buildings left out here in the wilderness. Trying not to let her excitement get the better of her, she hurried forward to investigate the half-submerged concrete building.  
Another aircraft roared past overhead, and in the distance they heard the huge explosion as it dropped a bomb on a target unknown to them. The trike appeared through the fog once more, its engine drowned out by the sound of the jet plane, and this time there was no avoiding it. Caught in the searchlight's glare, the woman knew she had only one choice.  
"Mutant sighted!" a voice yelled.  
"Open fire!"  
"RUN!" she screamed to her children, as she turned to face the oncoming trike.  
"No! Mother!" the girl cried, but her brother grabbed her arm and the two of them ran for their lives.  
Pushing his sister down behind a rocky outcropping, the boy held his hand over her mouth and the two of them lay silent. Behind the rock they heard a _crash_ that sounded as if the trike had fallen on its side, then the sound of gunfire. After that there was nothing. The two teenagers listened hard for the sound of footsteps, praying that their mother was already hurrying after them. There was nothing. Eventually they heard the sound of a crackle as one guard spoke into his radio, "We got this one."  
"The other two are still out there. Let's finish the job."  
The girl tried to scream but the boy kept his hand over her mouth. He knew they had to get away before the guards began searching for them. Pulling his distraught younger sister to her feet, he half-dragged her away the scene. As she stumbled, he knew they'd waited too long. The humans were alreadyon them. Bullets raked the earth all around them, but somehow the two young mutants remained unharmed. The boy pushed his sister to the ground, and spun round to face the onrushing guards. Both of his hands shot out, his fingers elongating into long, sinewy, rope-like tentacles, grasping the two guards around the throat.  
"No! They'll kill you too!" his sister shrieked.  
The guards struggled, but the boy was angry and tightened his grip, choking the life out of the humans.  
"Come _on_!" the girl screamed, pulling him away.  
Retracting his fingers to their normal length, the boy left the two guards clutching their throats and gagging desperately for oxygen, as the teenagers fled. They could hear the trike's engine as it pursued them across the open ground. The fog was their only protection now as the sound of the engine grew louder and louder, both mutants hoping it would roar past them and off in another direction.  
They were not so lucky. The trike was bearing down on the two running figures, and the girl knew there was only one thing to do now. Grabbing her brother, she knocked him on to his back and covered him with her own body, calling on her power to hide her. The trike roared past where the two of them had just been standing, the searchlight sweeping the ground, the humans scanning the fog-shrouded terrain for any sign of their prey. To their disbelief, there was nothing. The empty barren landscape stretched in all directions as far as they could see, dotted by nothing but rocks, and here and there a stunted lifeless tree. A ruined building of some kind was half-buried by boulders, but it provided no cover that the kids might be hiding behind. The guards looked at each other in confusion. They searched for several more minutes, but found no signs of life. Eventually they had no other choice but to give up, package up the body of the mutant they had already killed, and head back to camp. When the fog lifted they'd send out more search parties. There was nowhere to go in the wasteland, and no food or water. Those kids would be found eventually, alive or dead.  
  
When they were sure the trike was gone, the girl relaxed and her power dropped. She stood, and pulled her slightly dazed brother to his feet. He'd been grazed in the shoulder by a stray bullet, and she tore off a strip of her clothing to wrap around his arm as a bandage. Both of them were already looking towards the concrete building, wondering the same as their mother. Could this be it? Could this really be what they had set out on a desperate, seemingly hopeless journey to find? Could this really be where the device had been hidden for over twenty years?  
It took them the best part of an hour to move enough of the rocks to gain access to the entrance. They paused every few moments to make sure that no guards were approaching. The fog was, if anything, thicker now, and that was good. If this place was what they thought it was, it was unthinkable to be caught when they were this near to escape. The guards didn't know what was in here. As they worked, both children fought furiously to keep their minds on the task in hand. Both of them knew their mother was dead. Both of them were devastated, shocked and terrified, but they knew they had no choice but to keep going. She had sacrificed herself to give them the time to get away, and they had to do everything they could to make sure that sacrifice was not in vain. Once the entrance was cleared, they cautiously stepped through into the building's interior, and began looking around for wherever it might be hidden. The structure was not large, and the device was not small. There could only be a few places where it might be kept.  
It was the girl who found it, and her brother helped her manhandle it out on to a clear area of space. Both of them were surprised by the lack of dust on the machine that had not been touched in over twenty years, but then there had been nobody here to generate dust. Tentatively he flicked the activation switch, and both of them breathed a sigh of relief when they found that the device still worked. The screen flickered to life and the boy began tapping at the keyboard immediately beneath it.  
"OK," he said. "Here goes..."


	2. Chapter One

A/N: to Simply Myself, no these are not Gary and Marina's children. This story is independent from my previous works. There is another Gary/Marina story in progress though. Thanks for the review! :-)

Chapter One

  For as long as he could remember, Paul McKinstry had been fascinated by mutants. As a young boy he'd always wanted to know what it was that made them different from other people. He'd always wanted to understand why so many people feared and hated them. He'd have given anything to have met one. One boy at his school had disappeared, his family moving away quite suddenly, and rumours abounded that he had been one. As he entered his teenage years, Paul had harboured fantasies that he himself might be a mutant. He'd heard that most mutations didn't manifest themselves until puberty, and it wasn't until he was nearly eighteen that he'd finally accepted he was just an ordinary person. When he finished school, winning prizes for biology and chemistry, his fascination with mutants was still as strong as it had ever been, and it was no surprise to any of his family or friends when he applied for and was accepted into a mutant genetics course at University. Most people found his obsession a little strange, and many suspected that he was in fact a mutant, but Paul was not concerned. He didn't subscribe to the popular view that mutants were an abomination. If this was the way Nature wanted humans to advance, then who were we to stand in evolution's way?

 Amazing his lecturers and tutors with his grasp of the subject and his incredible thirst for more knowledge, Paul was now in the final year of his degree course. Part of his degree involved a major research project in the final year, and he had opted to study exactly why it was that mutations rarely showed themselves until the teenage years. He was already pushing back the boundaries of contemporary science, going far beyond anything even his supervisors had ever seen before. Ironically, perhaps, for somebody who was so interested in mutants, he had yet to encounter one face to face. He'd worked in the laboratory with tissue samples from dead or captured mutants, but that was incomparable to actually meeting one. Sometimes he felt like an archaeologist or palaeontologist, working with what he had to find out what he could about beings he had never seen. 

 Determined to actually come into contact with a real mutant, Paul McKinstry had begun scanning every newspaper report he could find with any mention of them. He'd built a small radio receiver to intercept police transmissions. He'd gone to the locations of recent mutant sightings, hoping to find some clues that might enable him to meet one. He guessed there were probably some mutants being held in prisons or in police custody, but they would be under heavy guard and he couldn't expect to be allowed to see them without a good reason. Frustrated, and with his final exams just around the corner, Paul had abandoned his search, at least temporarily. In theory, the exams should have been relatively easy, since he knew more about the topic than the people setting the exams did. But his course irritated him. There were certain theories and assumptions taught that he was sure were incorrect. Unfortunately, without having a real life mutant to test on, there was no way he could prove any of it. He had been using previous exam papers for practice, and the one from three years ago now sat in front of him. 

 **With reference to Rosiçky's Theorem, explain in detail why only human males carry and propagate the mutant gene**, he read. Paul groaned with exasperation. Rosiçky's Theorem was wrong! It made too many assumptions! If ever used in practice, it would cause damage to the brain! He'd explained this a dozen times to his supervisor, but without any real experimental data he couldn't publish his own theory. He sighed. That was the problem with being young. Nobody listened to you. With a wry smile, he could imagine in twenty or thirty years, young men and women sitting down in front of their exam papers and moaning about McKinstry's Theorem. He had already decided that his future lay in research. He wasn't interested in working from a commercial point of view. Money didn't interest him, besides having enough to live on. His obsession with mutants and their secretive powers was what drove him.

 His mind was beginning to wander, and he couldn't keep his concentration on the exam paper. A thought had just occurred to him. If a mutant child were abandoned by its parents – which happened in most cases – then it would end up in an orphanage, wouldn't it? Maybe he should try and find where the nearest one was. Maybe he could gain access to a mutant that way. Maybe he could even adopt one, once he had graduated and started earning. Paul yawned and glanced at the clock. It was nearly 1am. His stomach rumbled. _I'm hungry_, he decided, and stood up to walk through from his room to the kitchen. Opening the fridge, he flicked on the TV, hoping to catch the news headlines. It seemed he'd just missed them; the program was now on to regional news. He listened idly to what the newsreader was saying:

 "…police are continuing their search. The origin and motive of the mutants remain uncertain…"

Paul's attention was grabbed by the mention of the word 'mutant'. He looked up from the sandwich he was making, and focussed fully on the news.

 "…let's go now to an earlier report from our correspondent at the scene."

The camera switched to a man wearing a fleece and scarf to protect himself from the fierce winds that played havoc with his greying hair. Paul recognised where he was standing; it was that big open space down by the sports fields, not far from the university's main campus. The reporter spoke into a hand-held microphone, "Yes, I'm standing on just about the exact spot where a crowd of witnesses this morning claim to have seen a young girl vanish into thin air."

Paul raised his eyebrows. An invisible mutant?

 "It seems clear that mutation is the only explanation for this anomaly, which cannot simply be dismissed as a trick of the imagination. Over a hundred people claimed to have witnessed the phenomenon. Unsurprisingly, fear and tension have grown among the locals. The thought of an invisible mutant on the loose is a terrifying prospect. Police continue to try and track the suspected mutant, but so far without success…"

Paul didn't wait to watch the interviews with random bystanders. He switched off the TV, grabbed his sandwich, and went out to the hallway to get his coat. This was a chance too good to miss. If he could actually come into contact with a real life mutant, it would – well, it would be a dream come true for him. The police hadn't found any traces, but Paul reckoned he knew as much about mutants as just about anyone alive. If anyone could track one down, it was him. Maybe if found the mutant, he could even start to prove some of his theories were correct. He closed and locked the front door behind him, heading out into the darkness of the night. If anyone could hunt down a mutant, it was him.


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

The wind shrieked like a howling demon around him as Paul McKinstry made his way across the university sports fields to the site of the alleged mutant sighting. Tall but slender, Paul struggled to keep his footing against the fierce gales that swept across the campus. His hands stuck firmly in his pockets and his jacket's collar pulled up over his mouth and nose, he was nevertheless still chilled to the bone by the winter storm. Snow swirled around, attacking him from all directions like stabbing darts. He wished now that he'd spent just one or two more minutes grabbing gloves and a scarf, and possibly a hat.

Paul checked his watch. 1.30am. He wondered if there was anybody else behaving quite as stupidly as he was at this moment in time. Leaving the warmth of his rented flat for the icy hell of the blizzard outside, in search of the mutant, had seemed like such a good idea at the time. But now that he was actually here, feeling the full cold fury of the winter elements assailing him, he was wishing he'd decided to leave it till the next day. Ducking into the cover provided by a bus stop, he stared through the falling sheets of white and wondered if it would be wisest to turn around and head back home. No. He was almost there. Ahead of him was the street where the mutant had been sighted. If he couldn't find any clues that might lead him to her, then he would head back home.

He left the bus stop and hurried into the street. There was nobody in sight, nothing moving apart from the endless cascade of snowflakes from the sky above. The snow beneath his feet was thick and deep, and he wished he'd put on a pair of sturdy boots rather than his cheap trainers. Well, it was too late now. He stopped at the spot where the TV newsman had been standing, where the mutant had apparently been spotted. Paul looked around in all directions. He wasn't really sure what he was looking for. He wasn't really sure what clues he had hoped to find. In his desperation and eagerness to meet a mutant, he had come here in hope rather than expectation of finding anything.

Was there anywhere around here a runaway mutant might be hiding? He looked at the buildings once more. On one side of the street were tenement blocks and a row of shops. He saw lights at one or two windows, but apart from that everything seemed dormant. On the other side of the street were more tenements, but he saw now that the block on the end was boarded-up and abandoned. Hmm…could that be where the mutant was hiding? If indeed she was hiding anywhere. If indeed there had been a mutant. Paul knew he was relying on too many assumptions, and he was annoyed at himself. But still, if it meant finding a mutant, he was prepared to follow any lead or any assumption, regardless of how hopeless it seemed. He began to walk towards the abandoned tenement.

**Danger**:** building unsafe. Do not enter**, read a couple of warning signs at the entrance. Paul stopped for a moment, but decided to take the chance. The building was probably safe. Whoever had erected the sign probably had to put it up to protect themselves from being sued by anyone who happened to get injured. It wasn't as if it was going to fall down around him. There would be scaffolding and stuff in place if that were a possibility. He ducked underneath the warning signs, and made his way inside.

Just inside the building were a pair of footprints, as if somebody had knocked the snow off their feet before going any further. So somebody else was in the building, or at least they had been recently. Paul cautioned himself not to get too excited…it might not be the mutant. It might be a homeless person looking for somewhere to spend a few nights. There were further tracks of snow leading onwards, and he followed them. They led more or less to a set of stairs going up to the first floor. The trace petered out halfway up the staircase, but at least he knew that whoever had made the tracks had come this way.

Paul sniffed the air. He wasn't sure what he hoped to smell, but maybe some sign that a person had been recently. The smell of food perhaps. There was nothing, just the musty smell of the abandoned, uncared-for building. There was nothing to tell him which way to head now, so he made a choice at random and took the next set of stairs to the second floor. As he was climbing, one of the stairs buckled and cracked beneath his weight, threatening to knock him off balance and pitch him down on to the ground floor atrium. There was nothing to grab hold of to steady himself. Paul hurriedly scrambled onwards, taking his weight off the damaged step. The rest seemed secure enough and, slightly shaken, he continued climbing to the second floor.

There was somebody here. Or at least he could hear something. He could feel a source of warmth too. Somebody had lit a fire, somewhere on this floor, and he thought he heard voices. Was it the mutant? Could there be more than one of them? Paul moved cautiously. It could have been anyone. It might even have been gangsters or drug dealers hiding from the police. He moved onwards, following the heat source. He could hear the crackling of the flames now, and he knew the fire had to be in one of the rooms to his left. He listened, but couldn't hear anything. If there had been voices, there weren't any now. Approaching cautiously, he peered inside the room which held the fire.

It was a small fire, made out of what appeared to be old pieces of furniture. Beside it lay a couple of empty tins of food, and a bottle half-full of water. But that wasn't what interested Paul. On the other side of the fire lay a sleeping figure, her body rising and falling rhythmically as she breathed. The girl was maybe fifteen or sixteen, curled in a foetal position next to the flames, her only protection from the bitter cold. She shivered in her sleep, and her body instinctively curled tighter. Her thin clothing seemed horribly inadequate for the winter chill, and she was clearly freezing. As cold as he himself was, Paul pulled off his coat and walked across to the girl. He knelt beside her, placing his coat over her, and putting a hand on her forehead to try and test her temperature. It didn't feel good.

Was this the mutant? Was this the girl who had attracted so much attention by seemingly disappearing in front of the crowd today? That would explain why she was hiding here, anyway. Mutants had little choice but to keep themselves hidden from the authorities and the general public. Paul's intellectual curiosity rose as he experimentally touched the girl's hands, wondering exactly what powers she possessed, if she was indeed the one. He wondered if it was possible to bring her back with him. He lived alone in his flat, but there was room for two. As long as he could keep her a secret – surely that would be what she wanted – then he would have the mutant he needed to help conduct the research he wanted to do. Yes. That would work. It wouldn't be easy, but this was too good an opportunity to pass up. A real mutant…it seemed too unbelievable to be true, that he'd finally encountered one.

He was still touching her ice-cold hands, when her fingers suddenly, unexpectedly curled around his. She smiled, and whispered weakly, "Hey, Squiddie…"

Then her eyes opened and she looked up at him. Instantly the girl frowned, "You're not my brother!"

"Your brother?" said Paul. "You mean there's another?"

The girl didn't respond. Throwing his coat aside, she struggled to her feet and hurriedly backed away, crying, "Squid! Squid! Help!"

"Mirage?" came a voice from the adjoining room.

Paul looked round to see a boy, seventeen or so, appear in the doorway.

"Get away from my sister!" the boy yelled.

Before Paul could react to try and calm the situation down, the boy struck. His right hand shot out like a snake, his fingers extending with lightning speed until they had grabbed Paul around the chest. Instinctively Paul struggled, pulling against their grip, but to no avail. They were no longer like fingers, but like tentacles, stretching fifteen feet or more across the room and holding him with impossible strength. With his other hand the boy extended five more tentacles, grabbing hold of the girl and gently pulling her towards him. Trembling and nervous, she hid behind her brother.

"Squid, I'm scared," she wailed. "What if they've found us?"

"Mirage, don't worry, we're gonna be OK."

Paul fought to escape from the tentacles that still held him, but he hadn't the strength to even begin dislodging them.

"Look, I'm not here to hurt you," he said quickly. "I'm a research student. I just wanted to find a mutant, that's all!"

Anger crossed the boy's face, and one of the tentacles moved up towards Paul's neck. Curling around his throat, it began to tighten.

"Are you going to kill him?" the girl asked.

"We don't have any choice!" the boy said. "He's found us! We can't let him tell anyone else we're here!"

Pulling with all his strength against the tentacles, Paul hurled himself to the floor. The boy was caught by surprise, and Paul managed to break free of the tentacles. Even as the enormous squid arms were reaching for him once more, Paul rolled over to crouch behind the fire. He guessed it would provide momentary protection, to enable him to plan what to do next. His coat was still lying where the girl had thrown it, so he grabbed it and made a run for the door. A tentacle grabbed him by the ankle, but his momentum pulled him out of its grasp, and he frantically dashed back to the staircase.

Footsteps behind him told him that the mutants were in pursuit. A tentacle lashed against his shoulder as he ran, and he cried out at the whip-like pain. Reaching the stairs, he lost no time in hurrying down them. He had forgotten about the damaged stair, and his foot caught in it before he reached the bottom. Paul desperately tried to pull himself free, but his foot was stuck between the cracked wood. Glancing behind him, he saw the boy at the top of the stairs. The boy's hands were raised and ten tentacles suddenly shot towards the trapped research student. Paul ducked, but two of the sinewy rope-like arms grabbed hold of him. His struggles to escape became more frantic. In the end he kicked too hard, and the staircase beneath him collapsed completely. He slipped out of the tentacles' grip and fell through to the landing on the floor below.

The fall had knocked the breath out of him, but he thought he was safe. After all, the stairs had fallen in. The boy couldn't come after him. Paul glanced up to see what the teenagers were trying to do. His eyes widened in sudden fear and horror as he saw the boy's left hand shooting out, five squid arms gripping hold of the walls. Jumping down through the ruined staircase, his extended left hand checking his fall, the boy dropped to the floor safely. Instinct overtook Paul's logical mind, and he struggled to his feet, running to the stairs that would take him back down to the ground floor and the exit. Avoiding flailing tentacles as he went, he pelted down the staircase faster than he had ever run in his life. His lungs felt like fire and his body was still pained from the fall, but he forced himself to keep going. A tentacle lashed him on the side of the head as he sprinted towards freedom, but it wasn't enough to stop him. Paul bolted out through the door into the street, where he immediately slipped on the icy surface and went flying. Collapsing on to the snow, he waited for the mutants to emerge from the tenement block in pursuit. They hadn't. Several minutes passed, but there was no sign of anyone. Perhaps they thought it was too risky to follow him. Slowly, painfully lifting himself to his feet, Paul staggered back in the direction of his flat.


End file.
